into the mountain teeth
by amazuppai
Summary: He's not looking forward to filing the report for this one, because what is he supposed to say? They came through the stargate, they picked a direction that seemed the most promising and flew for a while, and then they mysteriously fell out of the sky and crashed miserably and will probably die.


They are going to die. That's the only tangible thought Rodney can muster through the blinking lights and screeching alarms and the whole _world_ shaking apart, like a nine-scale earthquake while he's standing right on the fault and it's shaking his brains apart, turning them into something akin to alphabet soup, grey matter and formulaic equations instead of fun little shapes for kids. Someone is shouting at him, voice booming over the cacophony in the Jumper's cockpit and telling him to _move, dammit_ , and Rodney manages to pick out a few broken phrases that instruct him into the rear hatch, so he follows them, stumbling and cursing to the second compartment without really knowing why until the doors slide shut behind him and the noise is cut almost in half, quieter but still deafening and oh, no, oh god no this has happened before, this is Jumper Six all over again only this time there's no water, just grassland and forests and huge, jagged mountains breaking like teeth into the skyline.

John's voice crackles through the intercom this time, _hold tight, we're about to hit–_ , the only warning he has before the sudden, crushing impact of the ship hitting hard earth and rough stone, and he can only hope that they make it out of this somewhat in the vague vicinity of 'alive'.

* * *

The crash was not as bad as it had felt, which is some small mercy in his endless lifetime of cripplingly bad luck. When he comes to, he still has all of his limbs and appendages attached, although his left hand hurts to move but still works if it has to and he's bruised (broken?) a few ribs and he is concussed to all _hell_ , and he takes his first coherent moments thanking whatever powers that be for his continued existence, even though he is sure that they must have had some part to play in getting them into this mess in the first place.

The hatch is dark and dusty and smells of a strange mixture of newly turned earth and the dirty, oily smell you get when you lift the hood of your neighbour's broken-down old Chevy and pretend to know what you're doing, burnt and rusty and probably unsalvageable. Rodney sits himself up, takes a moment just to breathe because holy hell, ribs hurt a _lot_ when you damage them, then slowly brings himself to his feet, shaking from the effort but feeling a little more practical for it, even if his head is swimming and he may or may not throw up. The doors between there and the cockpit have been shaken nearly half a foot apart, and through them he can see sunlight, filtered through the clouds of dirt in the air but bright and beaming and promising. He peers through to try and get a sense of where they landed, what the ship's condition is, how badly they–

 _John_.

He can't believe it took him this long. His team-mate's safety should have been the first thing he considered; John knows what he's doing, John would take charge, John would have more ideas on survival in extenuating circumstances, John would _know_. Rodney tries the door release, the mechanism thankfully intact enough for it to grind the doors apart with a noise not unlike a sinking ship, a heavy pneumatic wail, jamming two-thirds open but enough for him to work with and oh, holy _shit_.

The front of the Jumper, it seems, took the brunt of the impact, the windshield cracked and surprisingly not broken (he knows how much pressure these things can take, and it is a _lot_ ), some of the cockpit's inner components shredded or broken or sparking intermittently, and that's just the ones that are still remotely intact. Most of the ship's innards are beyond recognition, shards of metal and crystal and frayed bits of wire and, in some places, small flames, thrown about like someone had been trying to create the most chaotic scene possible and over-achieved, and it is almost impossible to make out John's shape still sitting at what remains of the control board, entirely unmoving. Deathly still.

"John," Rodney tries, but his voice comes too quiet, raspy from the dust, so he swallows and coughs and tries again, "John, are you there?" There is no response, so he picks his way across the rubble (the _carnage_ ) to press his fingers to John's neck, pulse and breathing weak but still there. "John, I need you to wake up, because you are much better at these things than I am and frankly I'm a little too dizzy to not–"

And he cuts off there, because while he has been taking stock of John's injuries he has come across a frayed metal shard of _something_ , jammed so deep in the Colonel's side that it is a wonder he's not dead already. Rodney tries calling him again, for lack of anything else, and finds that giving his shoulder the old shake is what finally brings him around, a breath pulling in thick through his nostrils before his head rises a little and glassy eyes blink open, and Rodney prays his thanks again. He hopes it isn't becoming a habit.

"Rodney," John murmurs once his eyes have focused a little more and he has coughed the dirt from his lungs, voice even rougher and quieter than Rodney's own had been.

"Yeah, hey, it's me," he replies, ignoring his own ruined ribcage in favour of leaning down to be at even eye level with John, hand still resting on his shoulder. He honestly doesn't look so good, though Rodney supposes that anyone who survived a horrible crash landing and got impaled in the process wouldn't look too healthy. "How do you feel? I mean, uh. Obviously you wouldn't feel _good_ , but what I'm trying to say is, on a... a scale of one to ten–"

"Hurts–"

"I know, it... I know. Look, I need to go find the med kit to patch you up, alright?" he says, and as he is speaking he is finally forming some sort of plan. Find the med kit. Fix them up. Get out of here and assess the damage, try to find help. Rodney stands again and heads back for the rear compartment, murmured affirmations of "try not to move" all he can offer in the meantime. John hums agreeably and his head lolls back against the chair, but his eyes stay resolutely open, and that's the best he can do for now, they suppose.

The kit doesn't take too long to find and doesn't seem to be too banged up by the crash, so he takes it back to the cockpit to rifle through it there, where John can see him and where he can keep an eye on John. He feels sorely lacking in typical medical procedure or any sort of useful knowledge, working solely off of gathered experience and observations and things he's heard in passing or learnt from movies, and he makes a vow to himself to at least take a basic first aid course when they get back, which really, he should have done already. He manages to clean the wound a little and apply what seems like an adequate amount of pressure with one of the little field bandages, which should suffice for now until he can assess the situation and John has time to get a little more lucid (although he doubts it, really, losing that amount of blood and getting that much of a blow to the head, he'll have a hard enough time as it is).

He tries to plan his route a little better as he packs up the kit, tries to formulate a full hypothesis of it all as he packs it away in easy reach in the rear of the Jumper. He has to get John out of the cockpit, at least, has to lie him down somewhere he can _rest_ and try and recover while Rodney thinks of some way out of this, but he can barely even stay awake, let alone haul his ass up and away from the Jumper, unless–

Yeah, it will have to do for now. The rear of the Jumper is still pretty much intact, and they can jam the doors back together if they need to in a pinch. "John," he says, and there is no response, so he tries again a little louder and gets an affirmative grunt in return. "I'm going to need to lift you up for a second, alright? You're going to need to stand up for just a few seconds, so we can get you from here to the seats in the back. You reckon you can do that for me?"

John mutters something that sounds like a complaint (good, his brain his still working, that's _good_ ), then nods, holding a shaky hand up for Rodney to take. It's awkward, trying to drag him from the cockpit to the hatch without jostling his wounds or breaking Rodney's ribs even further, and while they do eventually make it, John laying flat on the bench seats of the hatch, they are both weak and breathless and on the brink of passing out. John may have actually blacked out, it's difficult to tell, but he stirs when Rodney speaks to him and complains about how much that sucked, and Rodney smiles his relief for a moment.

They sit in the back of the Jumper while Rodney takes stock, using his tablet to gather a list of everything they have on board; emergency rations, repair kits, the basic first aid kit he has already raided, four side-arms and two P-90's with about six clips worth of ammunition, three packs of C-4 explosives, and the toolbox he's vowed to bring with him for every mission involving a Jumper, because you never seem to know with these things. It's not a lot to work with, but it makes him feel more useful, and if there is anything that they're used to by now, it's unexpected emergencies.

Rodney figures they have about four hours before they're overdue for check-in, judging by the time it was when the Jumper crashed and how long he estimates they'd been unconscious, another two hours before Atlantis deems them late and in trouble and sends out a rescue team (depending on how paranoid Sam is feeling at the time, which, he figures, would not be a lot), and another hour or three before they find the Jumper under decent circumstances, which is doubtful again. That takes them the whole way through the night at least, and he knows almost nothing about this planet and even less about the nature of John's injury; he could well bleed out long before then.

"We'll just have to make do," John rasps after Rodney has relayed these calculations to him, staring waveringly at the roof with half-lidded eyes, and then (slowly, between gasped breaths and long, empty pauses) he begins to lay out his own plan, one that is _actually_ useful to their current situation; adapt the life-signs detector to scan things in much closer magnitude, make sure he isn't still filled with shrapnel or bleeding internally, and if luck is with them, he should be fine to heal from there.

It gives Rodney something solid to focus his efforts on, at least, sitting across from John and reworking the designs of the detector while he chatters, talking mostly to himself as he always does, something to calm him and keep him focused, and he finds that it has the added effect of helping to keep John lucid. He doesn't usually respond, but sometimes he'll mutter something or hum in agreement, and while it must be tiring for him, they know it is best that he stay awake for now.

It's not as difficult as Rodney had thought it would be, but time is of the essence in this respect and he's glad for having only a short waste of it. The detector-come-scanner doesn't seem to turn up anything immediately dangerous, aside from the obvious external blood loss and infection risk, which is the most good news they've had in as many hours, and John is asleep almost before Rodney gives him the clear.

And then he is left alone in the back of a downed ship, with the sun rapidly dipping over the horizon and rescue still many hours away.

* * *

John flits awake nearly two hours later, a couple of breathy coughs filling the silence of the hatch and pulling Rodney's attention away from his work. He sets his tablet down and fetches one of the canteens, helping John sit up for a drink and asking how he's feeling. "I feel like I could really use a beer," he grunts back, and Rodney laughs.

"Well hey," he says, shifting back once John is done, "If we get out of here–"

"We will."

"–I'll buy you as much as you can stomach."

John smiles up at the roof, closing his eyes for a moment, and then there is a pause. "Speaking of," he begins, Rodney glancing back up from his tablet, "How are your ribs?"

 _Of course_ , he thinks, averting his eyes back down to the screen, of course he is still thinking of others while he is trapped on another planet and trying, desperately, to recover from a puncture wound. John had pressed him about his wounds while they had been scanning his insides, made Rodney promise not to push himself or keep quiet about it.

"Still bruised," he replies, "Sore, but fine," but he has been having difficulty breathing properly for hours, sharp pain filling his chest whenever he draws breath and a trembling exhaustion spreading through his limbs when he exhales; not filling him with weakness, but sapping him of everything else. It worries him, because he has had broken bones before and he _knows_ , but there is little he can do about it with no medical facilities immediately available and John currently out of commission. At this rate, he surely won't be far behind, but at least he can get up and walk and put up a fight if he needs to – which he sincerely hopes he doesn't.

It is dark now, and with it comes the cold and the fear. He hates planets like these, the ones with stark contrasting weather patterns and trees that seem to whisper. John assures him that there is little on this planet that could pose a real threat, which basically translates to _even if there are Wraith or Genii or worse, we've always come out on top and this is no different_ , but Rodney has his doubts. He always has doubts, and now is one of the times when they become extremely prevalent and detrimental to the mission.

 _The mission_. He has a feeling that the mission, as mundane and routine as it was supposed to be, has been a complete and utter failure at this point. He's not looking forward to filing the report for this one, because what is he supposed to say? They came through the stargate, they picked a direction that seemed the most promising and flew for a while, and then they mysteriously fell out of the sky and crashed miserably and will probably die, though he's not sure about the last part; he doesn't know how serious rib fractures are, just has a vague sense of ' _very_ serious, probably', and John does have an uncanny knack for survival, so maybe. Maybe they'll make it out of this one alive. If he were a betting man, though, he'd probably bet against them.

"Are you cold?" he asks John, because Rodney is himself and he can see, even when John shrugs non-committedly, the tremble and the pallor that may or may not be related to bloodloss, the tense set of his muscles. It seems to make him uncomfortable, averting his eyes to stare, more fixedly than before, at a point in space before him, so Rodney tries his best to cover it up. "Tired? Hungry? How's your wound feeling?"

"I'm fine," he growls back, then pauses, because Rodney is trying his best here and he knows it, can't fault him for it. He sighs, a little shaky. "I'm... pretty tired, yeah."

That's a little more pleasing than blatant refusal, at least. "You can sleep, you know," Rodney offers, John giving him a look that means his thoughts on the matter should be and _are_ obvious, irrational as they are. "You're tired, and you need to rest. Let your body patch you up while you take a break."

He's not happy about it, his distaste evident on his face, but even he has to accept that Rodney is right occasionally and reluctantly settles down for sleep, or whatever he can get of it, taking the proffered emergency blanket when Rodney digs it out of the mess of supplies he'd (sort of) stacked in the corner. John's wound is bothering him something fierce, keeping him awake and only ever halfway gone when he does sleep, but at least he has more energy now, does not sleep as deeply as when he had to be forced awake. Rodney isn't sure if that's better or worse, but he's going to try and tell himself that it's a good thing, or he's going to lose his mind.

He'd like to get some sleep too, because he hasn't since they crashed and god, is he exhausted, but part of him needs to keep watch on John and the other part needs to figure out why this happened in the first place. It is rare for the Jumpers to malfunction on their own, but when they do it is always spectacular, jamming them half inside a 'Gate or at the bottom of the ocean or here, in the middle of nowhere, slowly bleeding to death with nobody around to mourn them. He always hoped he'd go down doing something spectacular, blowing up a Wraith ship or harnessing a sun or Marie Curie-ing and dying of radiation but learning how to manufacture ZPM's, but this is always where he ends up, a nothing mission in a nowhere place with nobody around but John and whatever strange breed of bird was chirping away earlier in the day.

He can feel it rising in his throat now, sitting in the back of his mouth like phlegm he can't swallow, but he can't cough it out either, blood in his mouth and blood on his hands and all up inside him still, and he wipes it away before John wakes up and sees. It's not like there's anything either of them can do about it regardless, but Rodney doesn't need him on his case any more than he already is.

It's difficult trying to run diagnostics when the Jumper is as ruined as this, but at least in taking him longer he has more to do between now and when they will, supposedly, be rescued. It had to have been something to do with the engines, he figures, the drive pods or propulsion systems or a simple matter of looking under the hood, but with the cockpit so shredded and one of the drive pods snapped almost clean off, it is difficult to find anything determinate.

"The power," John says during one of his wakeful periods, completely out of context.

Rodney is silent for a moment, trying to figure out what he means, before he gives up and huffs a simple, "What?"

"The power, the uh… the conduit," he mutters, evident that he is trying pretty hard to remember the right words. "In the main propulsion mechanism. Something wasn't right, just before we crashed."

Rodney frowns, resting his tablet down on his lap instead of in his hands. He sorely wishes he was allowed to take aspirin right now, but he has no idea what sort of restrictions his injuries put on that, and Carson would be pissed if he ruined it. Carson will probably be angry with his state regardless. "What do you mean, something wasn't right?" he asks, trying to remember if he'd felt anything before the engines started to stall.

John blinks, stares at the roof, blinks again, then closes his eyes. "I don't know. Like, you know when your car is running low on gas, and it doesn't really act up, but it just doesn't feel right? It was like that."

"I always kept my car full."

"Oh."

Rodney isn't sure what to say to that, and John doesn't offer anything else, so they lapse back into silence while Rodney sets to work on focusing his investigation on the power generation system and its ensuing components, which are _also_ shredded to pieces, but he may just be able to figure out what he needs now that he has some idea of where to look. It's not going to help them any, because there is no way this rustbucket is ever flying again (he's good, but he's not _that_ good), but it would be good to know what nearly killed them, and maybe pass it on to the engineers back home if they make it back alive. Maybe he could leave a file on his tablet in plain view for them to find, but he doubts any of them would comprehensively understand his analyses, except for maybe Zelenka, but there are never any guarantees with him.

"Rodney," John sighs, shifting himself onto his side. Rodney hadn't realised he was awake, but his coughing had probably roused him. "Rodney, your chest–", because he had been hacking and wheezing and he can taste so much iron in his mouth, feel it warm and sticky on his hands, and he can't deny himself any more.

He sighs, thick with the liquid in his throat, wiping it off on his already filthy pants. "There's nothing that can be done," he mutters, because there isn't, but that doesn't stop John from frowning and thinking there should be, wishing there was. John's wound could be dealt with if Rodney knew his way around surgery (which he doesn't, and he's not even going to try), but neither of them are sure what to do about rib injuries, despite the numerous amount that John has had in the past. Certainly nothing that they could do in the back of a broken down spaceship.

* * *

Hours pass before Rodney finally gives up on figuring out the problem, too tired and too stressed to keep going at it, keep forcing his blurry eyes to pick through data streams and components. He hasn't been this breathless in a long time, all his air coming short and sharp and thick with the pain in his chest, and all he wants to do is lie down and sleep, let himself lose consciousness for a while and forget all this, but he's been keeping time and if Atlantis actually _does_ send a rescue, it will be fairly soon. He can't afford to miss that due to negligence, but god, is he spent, burnt out like so many of the Jumpers components around him.

He's worried about John's condition, too; he's been asleep for a fair while now, seemingly quite deeply (Rodney has been muttering to himself this whole time, and has had no reaction no matter how loud he talks), and his wound is still open and weeping and Rodney is pretty sure it's infected, but they don't have anything here that could help that. He's just going to have to see it through until rescue arrives.

Rodney doesn't realise he's dozing off until he hears something unusual, unable to place what it is until he rouses himself and works through the thick haze in his brain. There is a sharp crackle from somewhere to his right, a burst of sound and then quiet, and just as he begins to hear voices Rodney finally realises what it is, snapping forward to grab their radios from the seat beside him. It comes through indistinct and full of static at first, and for a moment he panics, worries that he won't be able to get through, but then they clear up and he is able to make it out. " _–is Teyla, please respond_ ," he hears, and he feels like he has never been so glad to hear her voice. " _I repeat, this is Teyla, please respond_."

"Teyla," he beams into the radio, "It's Rodney, thank god you're here."

" _Rodney! It is good to hear from you. We have been unable to contact you from Atlantis, what happened?_ "

"Our Jumper crashed," he explains, dragging himself up from his seat to see if he can wake John. "We're not sure what happened, damn thing just fell out of the sky. We're both in pretty bad shape, but Sheppard's definitely not going anywhere. We need a Jumper set for med-evac."

" _Understood. We have located the crash site and are already en route with Doctor Beckett. What are your conditions?_ "

He begins to go over the history and severity of their injuries in as much detail as he cares to, Carson taking over the radio to ask any questions where Rodney omits things he'd need to know. He has trouble waking John at first, both of them getting worried when he reiterates this to Carson, but he finally stirs and realises why there is more than one voice he can hear and is filled with stark relief. "They're here," Rodney tells him anyway, "We're getting out of here," and John closes his eyes and raises a fist, and Rodney bumps his knuckles gently against it with a smile.


End file.
